Episode two opens with Black Sunday, February sixth, nineteen thirty eight, when three massive waves swept hundreds of swimmers to sea at crowded Bondi Beach. Lifeguards performed over three hundred rescues, but five people died in Australia's most catastrophic beach disaster. From this tragedy, we explore how volunteer surf lifeguards became national heroes embodying Australian ideals of courage and mateship. Bondi's golden age saw massive parades, school pageants, and the beach becoming central to Australian identity as post war immigrants found belonging on democratic sand. But beneath the mythology lurked exclusions and tensions, from surf clubs banning women until the nineteen eighties to racial conflicts culminating in the two thousand five Cronulla riots, revealing paradise's complicated reality.
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